Seabirds and Pinnipeds
Our day started off knowing we would view cetaceans, including a pod of Biggs Orca and Humpback Whales. On the way, we stopped to see Harbor Seals, Bald Eagle, Stellar Sea Lions, and a pair of Black Oystercatchers. We saw many Rhinoceros Auklets and I am including a shot of one that I took later on. This Auklet gets his name from the horn on his beak.
The Strait of Juan de Fuca and Haro Strait were both rather sloppy on the first tour but flat calm on the second tour. We caught up with the Biggs Orca off of Limekiln Lighthouse and waited till they had passed so we could move in a bit closer. There is a 1/2 mile no go zone that we stay clear of around Lime Kiln.
As the whales left San Juan Island, then we maintained the 200-yard separation giving the whales their space and also keeping our speed below 7 knots to keep the noise level from interfering with their echolocation.
Playful Orca
The Orcas were in a pretty playful mood today. We did not see any kills, but we did see lots of playing around.
There is one pic of a pleasure boat that appears to be too close. However he was really well outside of 200 yards, but in a picture with a zoom lens, it is hard to know that. Even with the naked eye, it seems they are too close as viewed by inexperienced eyes. In our CORT (Crime Observation Reporting Training), our WDFW instructor said he takes people out with him, and they will guess how far the whales are from a vessel. He said they typically give an estimate that is half of the actual distance as verified by radar.
On the second tour, we were in Boundary Pass heading into Swanson Channel in Canadian waters. Lots of playing going on and when I broke off to see the Humpback Whale, he was only a few hundred yards away from the Orca. It is a pretty good day when you can idle away from orca and idle into viewing a humpback without picking up speed at all.
Ocular the Humpback
I did not get a good fluke shot seeing the underside of the whale’s fluke to ID the whale. I did get a pretty good top of fluke shot though. One of the shots if you look close you can see bumps on the whales head. Those are hair follicles for some sensory use. The whale was called Divot, but later I heard it had been miss identified and was really known as Ocular.
We were experiencing a very cool day with Biggs Orca and Humpback Whales. The term Biggs comes from a Canadian marine biologist by the name of Mike Biggs. Back in the ’60s or 70’s Mike came up with the idea of photo identifying the orca. His colleagues scoffed at him. However, photo ID is the standard today. To honor him, J26 of J Pod is named Mike. The Transient Killer Whales on the west coast are known as Biggs killer whales.
Check out some of my other photo blog pages at Whale Tales.
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